PaulSmithTek
Contributor
Lies, Corruption, and unsafe practices at a Commercial diving School.
By. Paul Smith
By. Paul Smith
Commercial diving school, what was it for me. Well where I start. I was so excited and wanted to be a commercial diver for as long as I can remember. I wanted to go off-shore and be one of the big boys. So I did some basic research of the schools in the US. Called and compared the differences, and thought I made the right decision. So after I got all of my finances into place I was off to the great northwest. (I am keeping the Schools name confidential, for the time being.)
Upon arrival at the school, everyone was so friendly, willing to do anything they can for you. I talked to my recruiter and she said after I graduate and go the gulf I would be making any where from $800-$1000 a week offshore. I was thinking wow what an impressive school. Well about 4 or 5 weeks after school had begun we were ready to get into the water. We had pressure tests in the chamber and we all had our equipment, everything was in order. Let me stop there, and go back to the equipment issue. This is where all the problems with the school started. A friend and I met this Guy named Harry (NOT ACTUAL NAME) that owned his own dive shop XYZ across the water from the school. Harry was an awesome guy. Let me put it this way he gave us the deal of a life time. We referred people from the school to him, telling them that he was giving great deals, I mean come on he wasn’t making much money on anything he sold us. Our dry suites at any other store were around $1,000 to $1,200 for the package. Harry was selling them to us for $400 - $600. Now I don’t know about you but that is a deal. We next thing we new everyone at the school in the new classes that were looking at gear were buying from Harry. Let me tell you a little about Harry and why he did this for us. Harry is also a commercial diver and has been in our shoes and knows how hard it is to start out in this industry and how expensive it is, he was just cutting us a break. Harry was willing that if the dry suites weren’t shipped to him by a certain date we would drive to Canada to get them for us. I haven’t met anyone at any other dive shop that would do something like that. Well now this is where it all gets more interesting. The school had a little dive shop that sold dry suites, the kind of dry suites that are more like wet suites then anything, they were always leaking and everyone was always complaining about them. They dive shop could sell them for what ever price they wanted, or refer students to go up the street to a Commercial diving shop, that has a direct link to the school to buy gear. Now I don’t know who agrees with me but if I can find a deal and get the service I am looking for I am going to refer people. The School didn’t like this. Harry would meet us at a local pub down the street from the school to give us our equipment, because the school was upset that they were losing business as well as the Commercial shop up the street. Harry would buy the beer and we would sit and drink and play pool, eat pizza or do what ever we wanted. Well one day the school got a whiff that Harry was meeting us at the pub to talk to some new students. We had 5 instructors and a women recruiter show up and sat there staring and whispering. Harry took over a pitcher of beer to the table and they said the don’t want his F*%#ing beer. And he better leave the students alone, and one instructor wanted to go outside and fight. They are saying this with students sitting right their thinking, wow what a big school it takes to talk crap to someone that is taking care of the students and wants to help them and doesn’t care about money. On top of that it is $16,000 dollars for school almost two years ago, and they are worried about their kick backs they get from the dive shop at school.
Later on a few months later we started talking and asking questions about being off shore. The pay, life offshore and everything else. We had an instructor that was very open and honest about it and said you don’t make s*$% off shore. Hell you don’t even break out as a diver for at least two years. You get crappy meals, you get treated like crap and that it isn’t worth the time to go down there unless you can pay your dues to the off shore society. After you break out then you might make some decent money. Lets put it this way I could make more money working at a telemarking firm taking phone calls then I could working offshore. They said that it is ok to work offshore when you have a family. Just remember the time you spend off shore will get you divorced if the cheating when you get to port doesn’t. Like they say what comes after diving in the phone book Divorce Attorney. So the point of this is that the School Lied when they said you can make all of this money, and still support your family.
Now about the safety issues, where do I start? I will get to the point. During our second to the last one of the school we had 3 weeks of SCUBA. We had to meet certain requirement in order to get our Canadian Cert.’s. With holidays and weather we had we were cramming dives, 3, 4, 5 dives a day. One day in September in 2004, I forgot my underwear for my dry suite. The school told me to dive anyway. So I dove 3 dives and for some reason my computer took a crap. So I had to borrow one of the schools. Well my depth gauge read 50’ and I looked at my dive watch from citizen that I use for back up and it read 75’ the schools depth gauge was off. So I ascended to 30’ for 10 minutes and then to 15’ for 5 minutes, then ended the dive. While I was getting my gear off I didn’t feel well. My neck was screaming with pain and I was dizzy. I let my instructor know and he told me to sit down and relax. I did so. Well after about 45 minutes and my neck was now numb, they put me on o2 and took me back to the school to do a Nero. Well they asked my who the president was and I said Bill Clinton, and they asked me to remember red round ball blue ink pen, five minutes later they asked me and I couldn’t remember. So they put me in the chamber on a treatment table 6 with two o2 extensions. I saw a hyperbaric doctor and he told me I hat type II DCS and could have been paralyzed from the neck down because it was effecting my central nervous system. It is amazing that it took the school so long to get me to a chamber when I was that bad. 15 minutes and I could have been paralyzed. After I got out they wanted me to sleep on the boat where the chamber was to be observed while everyone that stay there over night smokes. Oh that just reminded me when I was in the chamber the academic dean stood with in 10 feet of the o2 bottles that were being feed into the chamber.
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The next day after I got to school the academic dean told me that I was dangerous and that it was my fault, I told him what deco that I did and he said that I should have done any off gassing an came strait to the surface. Now I don’t know about anyone else but doesn’t this seem a little incorrect to you. I did what I knew and thought was right.So when I say be careful of the schools that you choose I am speaking from experience. My experience was corruption, Lies, unethical and unsafe diving practices.
